Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
Google Suspends Request Indexing Feature While It Has Indexing Issues
Google announced it has suspended, temporarily, the request indexing feature, within the URL inspection tool in Search Console. It didn’t say why, outside of making infrastructure changes. But it comes at a bad time as tons of sites are complaining about indexing issues with Google Search.
Google: Mobile-First Indexing Should Be Mobile-Only Indexing
So yesterday during John Mueller’s keynote talk at PubCon, he summed up what has been announced over the year around SEO changes at Google. One was on the mobile-indexing changes and the deadline. That caused some confusion amongst the SEO industry that needs clarification.
Coming Soon: Style Your Highlighted Answers From Google Search
Thomas Steiner, a web developer advocate at Google, said that soon you will be able to style a text fragment URL highlight on pages with the target-text pseudo class. So instead of the highlighted text being yellow, it can be blue, green, purple or whatever you like.
Google Backed Up With Getting New Sites Into Google News?
Google’s John Mueller said in a video he recorded on October 2, 2020 but just uploaded to the Google YouTube channel this morning that the Google News team is backed up in accepting new sites into Google News.
Google Search Console Data Anomalies With Web Stories
Google had added two notations around specific data anomalies within Google Search Console with Web Stories. Both are related to Google Discover and Web Stories, one was related to the launch of Web Stories on Google Discover.
Google Updates Search Quality Raters Guidelines On October 14th
Google has just updated the Search Quality Raters Guidelines PDF. The last time it was updated was on December 5, 2020, which was 10 weeks and 10 days ago. The new date on this document is October 14, 2020. It has been expanded from 168 pages to 175 pages.
Google Zurich Picnic Tables
Here are some photos from the Google Zurich building, where John, Gary and Martin use to go to daily. You can see the outside picnic area with tables in multicolored cloths, umbrellas and a nearby tra
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
Google Search is helping people understand the world in new ways. Tune in Thursday, October 15 at 12pm PT to see how → https://t.co/TEOBDToQ07 #SearchOn https://t.co/Ip1qcqfoOf, Google on Twitter
Usually a manual action on from the webspam side is when the page’s intent is significantly different (& often clearly spammy). Car blog vs pharmaceutical affiliate., John Mueller on Twitter
My Discover feed has replaced the slider with a heart-shaped icon.🎚️➡️❤️ The test was reported by @AndroidPolice this past April. https://t.co/QTkbNa0vNb CC: @rustybrick https://t.co/XiOMSZxpOe, Kenichi Suzuki on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
Global Privacy Control group aims to succeed where ‘do not track’ failed
Google Search Console temporarily drops request indexing feature
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
What you need to know about Google Analytics 4 (formerly Google App+Web), Cardinal Path
Industry & Business
Google Was a Godsend for These Companies. Now It’s a Rival., Wall Street Journal
Google’s breast cancer-predicting AI research is useless without transparency, critics say, VentureBeat
Links & Content Marketing
24 Engaging Content Ideas that Captivate Consumers, SEM Rush
Local & Maps
Google Calendar side panel adds Google Maps add-on, 9to5Google
Mobile & Voice
Google Assistant adds settings to select default podcast app, 9to5Google
SEO
Image Packs in Google Web Search – A reason you might be seeing high rankings but insanely low click-through rate in GSC, GSQI
Mitigating SEO Disasters – An Interview with Kaspar Szymanski, Botify
Rankable – Getting Your SEO Back on Track in the wake of COVID-19, iPullRank
Weighted Answer Terms for Scoring Answer Passages, Go Fish Digital
YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020, Moz
PPC
How To Optimize Offline Conversion Tracking, PPC Hero
Search Features
Journalist Studio premieres with two new tools for reporters, Google Blog
Other Search
Image archive, analysis, and report generation with Google APIs, Google Developers Blog
3 Latest Google Patents of Interest – October 13, 2020, Search Engine Journal
